WASHINGTON — How the Texas congressional delegation voted on selected issues last week:

Senate

• 1. Patent-law dispute: Retained, 87-13, the "first to invent" standard as U.S. law for giving priority to competing patent applications. This stripped a patent-reform bill (S 23) of language to switch to the "first-inventor-to-file" standard used by most other industrialized countries to determine patent winners and losers. A yes vote was to retain the first-to-invent standard.

• 2. Stopgap 2011 budget: Approved, 91-9, a temporary fiscal 2011 spending bill (HJ Re 44) to avert a government shutdown at week's end. President Obama then signed what is the fifth 2011 stopgap appropriations bill passed by Congress since last fall. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he "can't imagine anyone in the Senate voting against a bill that would return to taxpayers money we are wasting on the bloated and duplicative programs outlined (by the Government Accountability Office)." Carl Levin, D-Mich., said: "The price of (Bush-era) tax cuts for upper-bracket taxpayers, about $30 billion a year, far exceeds the $4 billion in spending cuts included in this bill. In other words, we could avoid draconian spending cuts if we do not continue the Bush tax cuts for the roughly one in 50 U.S. households with incomes above $250,000 a year." A yes vote was to pass the bill.

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Cornyn (R) San Antonio Y Y

Hutchison (R) Dallas Y Y

House

• 1. Highway, mass-transit projects: Passed, 421-4, and sent to the Senate a bill (HR 662) to provide billions of dollars in funding for road and bridge construction, mass transit and highway safety from March 4 through Sept. 30. The programs are funded not by general appropriations but by the Highway Trust Fund, which gets its revenue from federal gasoline taxes. A yes vote was to pass the bill.

• 2. 'Bridge to Nowhere': Defeated, 181-246, a Democratic bid to strip HR 662 (above) of funds for building the Gravina Island Bridge linking tiny Ketchikan, Alaska, with an airport on sparsely populated Gravina Island. This is the "bridge to nowhere" lampooned in recent years as an example of wasteful congressional earmarks. While notoriety has cost the Gravina Island project much of its anticipated federal funding since 2005, HR 662 contains $183 million in fiscal 2011 spending for it and the Knik Arm Crossing Bridge, another disputed project in Alaska. A yes vote was to defund the "bridge to nowhere."

• 3. Health-law paperwork: Passed, 314-112, a Republican bill (HR 4) to strip the new health law of its rule that businesses issue an IRS Form 1099 to any vendor to whom they pay at least $600 annually. The rule would raise funds for preventive care while helping the IRS catch tax cheats. But it has come under bipartisan assault as a paperwork burden on small businesses. Repeal would result in $22 billion in lost revenue over 10 years. To offset the loss, the bill would tighten rules for recapturing any excessive tax credits inadvertently received by lower-middle-income families to buy health insurance in newly established exchanges. Such credits are available, for example, to families of four earning up to four times the poverty level. Democrats called the GOP offset a tax increase on the middle class, while Republicans defended it as fiscally responsible. A yes vote was to pass the bill.

• 4. Stopgap 2011 budget: Passed, 335-91, a stopgap measure (HJ Res 44) to keep the government in full operation between March 5 and March 18 while cutting spending by $4 billion over that period. The House and Senate will use the two weeks to negotiate a budget path for the last half of fiscal 2011, which ends Sept. 30. Among this bill's cuts are $650 million in highway spending and a $2.8 billion rescission of once-popular earmarks that have been abandoned by their congressional sponsors.

• 5. Oil-industry taxes: Defeated, 176-249, a Democratic motion to HJ Res 44 (above) to suspend the oil-depletion allowance and other oil-industry tax breaks at a time when domestic programs are being cut. A yes vote backed the motion.